Because intimate relationships reactivate archaic levels of the psyche, notably our childhood wounds, psychotherapy rightly focuses on healing those wounds through developing consciousness. But Dr. C.G. Jung has reminded us of what ancient medicine knew and modern medicine has largely forgotten: that when a personal disease is raised to a higher, impersonal level, there is a healing effect. This lecture will attempt to understand the crisis in love relationships not so much as the sum of personal problems, but as a collective, cultural movement of the spirit.
Many people are puzzled and dismayed by the increasing breakdown of civility and decorum in modern life and the way in which world events seem to be spiralling out of control. Jung foresaw that this era, on the cusp of the Aquarian age, would be characterized by the death of our old values as prerequisite to their replacement by new ones--a kind of death and rebirth experience.
Lawrence W. Jaffe, Ph.D. is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Berkeley and faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is the author of Liberating the Heart: Spirituality and Jungian Psychology, and editor of a lecture series by Edward Edinger titled Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung's "Answer to Job." He also conceived, co-produced, and served as interviewer for the video series An American Jungian: Edward R. Edinger in Conversation with Lawrence Jaffe.